


though the truth may vary, this ship will carry our bodies safe to shore

by elsinorerose



Series: out here in the dark [9]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Discussion of Torture, F/M, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Injury/illness, Romance, nongraphic sex
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-22
Updated: 2021-01-16
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:54:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 7,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28239540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elsinorerose/pseuds/elsinorerose
Summary: A place for snippets of writing that never quite made it into a finished fic. First up: some excerpts from the unfinished final part of Out Here in the Dark!
Relationships: Jester Lavorre/Caleb Widogast
Series: out here in the dark [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1294154
Comments: 51
Kudos: 96





	1. ohitd #9: exhale, exhaustion, exotic

**Author's Note:**

> Hello readers! If you have not read my series Out Here in the Dark, I recommend checking that out first before reading the next few chapters of this collection. These will be excerpts from what was going to be the really long final part of that series. It ended up being too complicated and never got finished, but I thought it might be nice to share what _did_ get written. Enjoy!

_exhale, exhaustion, exotic_

Loving Jester has always been easy. Far too easy — easy enough to happen without warning, to sneak up behind you and _pounce._

Actually being with Jester, though…

Being with Jester is a challenge.

Not because it is unpleasant — not because he is not grateful — on the contrary, Caleb is nearly exhausted with pleasure and gratitude, with the heady and absurd knowledge that she is _his,_ that she has made him _hers._ Getting here was like fighting their way through a sea of battle, separated from each other time and again at the last minute by enemy swords or cavalry charges or a rain of arrows, but now that they have finally crossed the field and reached each other, there are no more questions. They are together. End of sentence. 

That doesn't mean the end of everything else, though. Of doubts, or of pain, or of the blood and mud and broken bones they've earned on their way across the battlefield. There are other kinds of exhaustion besides the ones found on the other side of long laughter or travel or a day spent together in bed. Love cannot actually heal all wounds. Not on its own, at least. It must work in concert with time, with effort, with tears, and with a fucking stubborn faith.

Or so Jester insists, anyway.

Caleb is less sure — that is, he is not sure that certain wounds can ever be healed, or that some battlefields can even be walked away from at all. He doesn't know where he would go. Where could he go? Where could there actually be peace and stillness and...he doesn't know how to say it...respite? Hope?

"Mmm, probably Ank'harel," says Jester after some thought.

Caleb looks down at her, affection running lazy circles around his heart. She is resting against him, one arm slung across his stomach and the end of her tail wrapped possessively around his ankle.

"I did not mean literally," he tells her, pressing a fingertip against the sharp point of one of her horns, just hard enough to send a spike of pain through the nerve endings and up into his hand.

Jester lifts her head so that her chin is nestled against Caleb's chest and gives him a long, languid smile. "You'd like it in Ank'harel. It's really nice."

"You have never been to Ank'harel."

"Well, _no,"_ she admits with a slight pout, "but I've read about it. I've read about Shamal Bay, and the Ozmet Sea, and Vasselheim, and Syngorn, and all _kinds_ of places, Caleb, and I think you'd like Marquet the best. It's hot and there are palm trees."

"Very exotic," he murmurs, stroking her shoulder.

She hums against his skin. "I'd like to go there someday," she sighs. "There's a lot of places I'd like to go."

"I will go anywhere with you," says Caleb, and he means it — across any ocean, through any wasteland, into any battlefield. Gods help him, there are so many scars out there that he has not collected yet, so many more blades and burns in his future. He can feel it with every breath. The air is heavy in his lungs, like a mist of blood and sweat, roiling and poisonous and choking. The smog of war.

Jester looks up at him again, and her gaze is desert wind and open sand dunes, sapphires and amethysts. Clear blue sky and soft sunlight. Sea salt, spices, and the cry of seagulls.

Caleb exhales, and the smog clears. Not entirely. Not forever. But enough for now.

He can breathe again.

"Let's take a vacation," whispers Jester. "I mean it. Somewhere crazy, and warm, just you and me."

"Just you and me," he echoes, and he thinks: _this woman will drag me across the world like a fucking hurricane, if I can just manage to keep up with her._

He is up for the challenge, he thinks. 

He hopes.


	2. ohitd #9: gentle, glow, gasp

_ gentle, glow, gasp _

When Jester drags him into the bed with her that first night, all lips and hands and soft sweet gasps against his skin, he allows himself sixty seconds to match her touch for touch, kiss for kiss, murmured declaration for whispered confession. Sixty seconds — no more, no less.

Then he moves back, lets go of her. Puts as much space between them as he can on the narrow, single-person mattress. His very blood aches at the separation.

"I'm sorry," he tells her, "I'm not — I cannot — "

"I know." Jester rolls onto her side, facing him, and places the back of one hand against his burning cheek. "I know. Me neither. Not yet."

"Fuck, Jester," he breathes. He leans into her hand, shuts his eyes against the cool smoothness of her skin. "Fuck, I wish I were ready. I want to be ready."

When he opens his eyes again, she is gazing at him with equal parts understanding and sorrow. The sight of her face, softly illuminated by the last rays of the sun setting outside the bedroom window, sends a jolt through his body. He has kissed her lips full and swollen, pulled a deep blush up into her cheeks, and her curls are falling unkempt around her neck and shoulders where he was just tugging his fingers through her hair. Fifteen seconds ago. Sixteen. Seventeen.

_ You are so beautiful,  _ he wants to say, and  _ I am so afraid of disappointing you. _

Jester closes the gap between them and kisses him once more, gently, so that his heart stutters instead of pounds, and then her hand moves down to the hollow at the base of his throat, caressing, mapping him, her fingers moving past his shirt collar and trailing over his clavicle. She finds the chain of his amulet, still new and untarnished, and she finds other things, too: bruises he hasn't told her about, scars that weren't there the last time she looked. 

He stops her before she can undo the top button on his shirt.  _ "Nein,"  _ he whispers, taking her hand in his. "Please. Not yet."

"Okay," she whispers back. "It's okay."

There is a moment, after Jester has searched his face with those shining dark eyes of hers for another eight seconds, when she rolls over and gets up out of the bed, and Caleb is suddenly sick with panic. Only a moment, though. She is not leaving him — she is just lighting a candle.

"I don't want to go to sleep in the dark, do you?" she asks when she notices him staring.

Gods, but he wants to get up and take her in his arms — but the thought runs cold as soon as it hits his heart, and he has to swallow, take a few steady breaths, before the wave of nausea passes.

And then Jester is taking off her clothes, and Caleb can't take any kind of breath anymore.

She is just changing into her nightgown, he realizes almost immediately, but the pink flush high on her cheekbones and the way she is glancing anywhere but Caleb's direction both contradict the casual, comfortable air she is clearly trying to project. Not that Caleb is looking at her face for more than one or two seconds. His eyes are drawn as if by actual magic to the contours of Jester's waist and hips, the curves of her small breasts, the glow that the flickering candlelight sets in her skin. She reflects flame like a sapphire. He is seized by a desire to cast  _ continual flame  _ in his own hand, to walk around her in circles, holding the heatless fire up to her neck, to the small of her back, to the shallow swell of her navel, just to see what the light does to her, just to see where the shadows fall, where the facets of this gemstone glitter and shine.

It is not the first time he has seen her naked, but it is the first time she has shown herself to him alone like this, and he is entirely overcome.

He has no idea how many seconds it has been by the time Jester has pulled her nightgown over her head and down to cover the rest of her. She turns back towards him, and when she sees the look on his face she ducks her head with a grin. "Shut up."

"I wasn't saying anything."

"Yeah, you were." 

Still grinning, still blushing, Jester climbs back into bed, under the covers this time, and Caleb joins her. He pulls her close to him, to his torn, marred body, still hidden under his clothes, still shameful and ragged. 

"You are so beautiful," he whispers into her ear,  _ and I am so afraid of disappointing you. _


	3. ohitd #9: scars, snuggle, sketch

_ scars, snuggle, sketch _

He shows her his scars the next night.

They are standing in their room as dusk falls outside along with a late winter snow. Jester pulled him through the doorway playfully by the end of his scarf a few moments ago, with a sly comment about helping him warm up, but he's already too warm — there is a fire in the room's small hearth, and he has been blushing steadily for the past ten minutes anyway. He has been allowed to touch her — to be touched by her — for only a day. It is dizzying. It is magic.

So he is undoing his scarf — or rather helping Jester pull it loose from his neck and shoulders while he stares dumbly at the smirk on her face — and without meaning to, he just...doesn't stop.

He shrugs off his coat first, followed by his book holsters, which he would be doing anyway before turning in for the night. When they have to make camp on the road, he keeps all his layers on, even the harness, uncomfortable as it is, but here in the relative safety of an inn he's grown used to the risk of having his spell components just  _ nearby  _ instead of on his person.

But now he finds himself fumbling at the buttons of his shirt collar, too, and Jester's eyes widen in surprise. 

"I want you to see," he tells her. "If — if you are — "

She nods, and then she's helping him, careful not to touch his bare skin before he's given her permission. Her healer's hands, artist's hands, are steady and sure, even as Caleb feels his own fingers trembling.

When his shirt is off, he wishes that he had done this sitting down or at least up against a wall, because he's suddenly aware that he has nothing to hold onto, nothing to balance himself with. If his head spins, if the room begins to tilt, he will just fall.

He takes a few deep breaths.  _ This was a mistake,  _ says a voice in his head.

_ Fuck off,  _ he says back, but even as a thought in his head it sounds weak.

"Are you okay?" asks Jester.

Caleb nods automatically.

Her eyes are very soft. She has not stopped looking at his face, has not even let so much as her gaze travel further down before she knows if he is ready, and he  _ loves  _ her. "You don't have to do this," she reminds him. "We can wait."

"I want you to see," he repeats, and he hopes (he hopes  _ so much) _ that she understands.

He thinks that she does. 

Her eyes lower, and she takes in the sight of him, and not for the first time Caleb is painfully conscious of his pale and unathletic frame, no muscles to speak of, hardly any hair on his chest — if the covers of Jester's favorite romance novels are anything to go by, he cannot be her ideal, surely. There is nothing impressive about him. Especially now, thin and haggard as he is, and still covered in  _ marks. _

The bruises are gone by now, though the pain lingers in certain spots. But the scars are  _ everywhere.  _ He is riddled with them, from his neck down past his waist, past where Jester can see. The wounds are healed, but no effort was made to remove the evidence. He's sure there are still some he hasn't found yet.

Jester has a look on her face that Caleb has seen before, as she follows the path of his injuries, flaw by flaw, like she's connecting dots — it's the look she wears when she is casting a difficult spell, or when she's trying to capture something tricky with pencil and paper. It's more than focus or concentration: it's the expression of a  _ curator.  _ She is committing this to memory, just as she commits drawings into her journal or prayers to her god. He wonders if she will draw this. He imagines his scars and blemishes sketched out like a map on a white page.

"Can I touch?" Jester whispers, and Caleb whispers back, “Ja.”

She reaches out with one finger, at first. Traces the scars on his chest, the white streak of a long-healed gash in his side, and the more recent ones: red, pink, thick and raised and ugly, in lines and curves and some shapes that he hopes she cannot identify. She trails one, two fingers, three, across the planes of his abdomen, his ribs, and then up to his shoulders, where —

"Fuck," Jester whispers, and she presses her open palm against the scar that wraps around his upper arm like a huge, hideous ring.

There are four of them — two just below his shoulders and two around his upper thighs, though he will not show her those lower ones yet. Even letting her see these two is...difficult. He is holding himself so still, barely breathing, so that he will not flinch at her touch; but when her hand comes to rest here he cannot help the shudder that passes through him.

Immediately Jester pulls her hand back. There are tears in her eyes. "I'm so sorry, Caleb…"

"Don't be." He stares at the floor, feeling his face grow hot with shame. "It's fine."

"No, I — that's not what I meant." Jester sucks in her breath. "I meant that I'm sorry this happened to you. I'm sorry this was done to you."

When he looks up at her, her jaw is clenched and she is staring at her hands clasped loosely in front of her around the silver holy symbol that is always hanging from her belt. He sees her thumb run along the sharpened edge of the miniature archway. No blood wells up from her skin. _ Not quite sharp enough.  _

Caleb takes her hands and kisses them.

"You know the strangest thing," he finds himself murmuring against her curled fingers, "is that these — " He holds up one forearm, bare and undamaged — "These are the worst of all. They don't feel like mine anymore."

Jester runs her fingertips over Caleb's lower lip, under his chin, and down the front of his neck. "Because your old scars are gone?"

He can't help but give a wry smile, despite feeling about as steady as a shaking leaf. "Who are we without our scars?"

Jester bites her lip for a moment, deep in thought, and her fingers stray to Caleb's shoulders. Her touch is so light that it almost tickles.

"I think," says Jester slowly…"I think that our bodies are as good as what they can do for us. I've been thinking about this a lot, actually."

Caleb can't blame her. If his limbs don't feel like his own anymore, he cannot even imagine how Jester has felt, trapped for weeks in a decaying corpse. She has only been truly herself, permanently, for two days.

He wonders what it took for her to disrobe in front of him last night. He wonders if she is still afraid of what he sees when he looks at her.

Jester strokes Caleb's shoulder with the back of her hand. "Can you still hold me?"

Wordlessly, he takes her into his arms, and she  _ hmms  _ against his chest.

"Can you still cast your spells, with these hands?" she asks.

_ "Ja,  _ of course," he murmurs into her hair.

"And you can still carry your books, and hug your friends, and snuggle with Frumpkin, and read and write and hold my hands?"

He does so, pulling away just enough to take her hands and cradle them both against his heart. "All of these things are still true."

"Then you’re still Caleb," Jester smiles up at him. "In every way that matters. Scars or no scars."

Gods help him, he has nothing to hold onto, nothing to balance himself with, except for the woman in front of him. If his head spins, or if the room begins to tilt, she will catch him, and she will never let go.


	4. ohitd #9: freckles, fingertips, fire

_ freckles, fingertips, fire _

The first time they try, they don't even get their clothes off.

Jester is on his lap, her hands in his hair, scraping gently with the tips of her fingers in a way that sends shivers down Caleb's spine, and he is about to reach up and start tugging the dress down off her shoulders when the door bursts open.

_ "Scheisse!" _

"Fuck!"

_ "AHHHH!" _

It's Nott. She stands frozen in the doorway, her yellow eyes  _ huge,  _ with what looks concerningly like acid pooling and hissing around her feet among the shards of the glass vial she just dropped.

Several moments pass. It seems to take Jester far too long to realize that both Caleb and Nott are waiting for her to speak first.

She swallows. "Nott…" she begins in a voice about two steps higher and sweeter than even she would ever normally use, "could you maybe think about knocking on the door next time?"

Caleb has to dig his fingers into Jester's waist to keep her from trying to turn around any further to look over her shoulder, because this situation is  _ bad enough  _ and he really doesn't need her to make things any worse by  _ moving. _

"This is  _ our room!" _ shrills Nott, glaring at Caleb.

_...Oh, gods, she's right,  _ he realizes. He hadn't even stopped to think earlier — he has been sharing Jester's room in recent nights, of course, that's not a secret, but this room was still  _ booked  _ for Caleb and Nott, and many of his things are still here — he is still used to turning right instead of left when he's stepping in to grab a book or a backpack, and it's not like either he or Jester were very clear-headed five minutes ago when they were stumbling up the stairs and...

Jester is glancing back and forth between the two of them, clearly out of ideas.

Caleb winces. His face might actually be on fire. "That —  _ ja,  _ you are correct, this is…"

"Go to Jester's room if you want to make out!"

"No, you are right, I'm sorry, we weren't — "

_ "God,  _ Caleb, or at least put a  _ sock  _ on the doorknob!"

"At the Lavish Chateau it was color-coded scarves," puts in Jester helpfully.

Caleb scowls up at her. "Anything else you'd like to contribute here?"

"...Green meant go away?"

He is on the verge of telling them  _ both  _ to go away, but Jester is  _ right there,  _ and from this close up...he has never noticed it before, but from this close up he can see that the freckles dusting the bridge of her nose aren't actually blue like those scattered lightly across her cheekbones, but a very faint, dark indigo-purple. Caleb swallows. He wonders what they look like on the rest of her body.

Not that he gets to find out now, thanks to  _ someone. _

There is a  _ cough  _ from the door. "I'm still here," announces Nott loudly.

"Ja, you are standing in a puddle of acid," says Caleb without taking his eyes off Jester's face, "you should probably leave."

"We're supposed to be meeting Yasha at the forge!"

"Oh, god," Jester groans, and now she slides off of Caleb, leaving him bereft and abandoned on the edge of the bed. "I forgot, Nott, are we too late? Did they start the fight without us?"

"No, they've all been  _ waiting,  _ we assumed you were just  _ running behind — " _

"I'm sorry, we completely forgot, it's just been so busy lately and Yasha is so quiet, she never reminds people of anything if she thinks it will bother them…"

" — didn't occur to anyone that you and Caleb would be up here trying to fuck in  _ my bed — " _

"This is  _ my  _ bed!" shouts Caleb. "Look, the pillows are covered in cat hair, Nott, give me  _ some  _ credit!"

Jester, who has finished straightening her dress and smoothing her hair back down, gives him a wide grin, takes his hands and pulls him to his feet, then across the room after her. "Come on, Cayleb, we have to go be good illegal fighting ring spectators. Watch out for the acid puddle."

Nott gives a little huff as they move past her out into the hallway. "I'm making  _ you  _ pay for that, Caleb, it was  _ your  _ fault."

"Why am I not surprised," he grumbles.

They are halfway down the stairs, Nott having scurried past them and disappeared out the tavern door already, when Caleb frowns. 

"Hold on, did you say green meant go away?"

"I did!" chirps Jester, swinging their clasped hands back and forth.

"Wouldn't red make more sense?"

"Red already means  _ extra hot and spicy,  _ Caleb," Jester says seriously. "That's basically a welcome sign. And blue is  _ I'm sleeping, come back later.  _ So it had to be green."

"...I think you are making this up."

"I think you should have warned me that there was cat hair on the bed."

A laugh bursts from Caleb's mouth before he can help it. "I'll warn you next time."

"Or maybe we just get our own room next time."

It takes him a few seconds to realize what she means. As has been happening so often recently, his heart gives a flutter that he is allowed to feel, and the surge of joy that rises in his chest to accompany it is one he doesn't have to try to push back down. "There will still be cat hair on the pillows if we are sleeping in the same bed for more than a couple of nights at a time,  _ liebling." _

"Frumpkin can sleep on the floor with Nugget!"

"It means a lot to me that you've already picked out the subject of our first fight. I hope you know that."


	5. ohitd #9: delicate, darkvision, dominate

_ delicate, darkvision, dominate _

Caleb cannot see. 

Around him, stone is closing in, grating and grinding, until it hits his limbs, his skull, his ribcage, crushing him, wresting the breath and life from him, and someone above him is  _ laughing. _

He wakes up with a scream or a sob strangled in his throat, he doesn't know which. Beside him, Jester stirs in the darkness.

She mumbles his name.

"I am here." Gods, everything is dark, everything is dark like in that cell, for  _ days,  _ and he cannot  _ see.  _ "I'm here.  _ Fuck." _

Jester wraps herself around him, and he would startle upright if he could move at all. Instead he gasps, sucking in as much air as he can, in and out, his whole body paralyzed like he's had a spell cast on him to hold him in place. 

He's vaguely aware of Jester's voice, murmuring, "It's okay, Caleb, you're breathing, just keep breathing, you're okay," and she is trying, she truly is, trying so hard, but her arm is around his waist and her legs are pressed against his and her tail is skimming the side of his foot and it's  _ too much — _

The moment he's able to move, he shoves himself away from her. 

It isn't gentle. He hears Jester's sharp inhale, like a knife slipping between his ribs. At least he can't see the look on her face.

"Sorry," he manages, "I'm sorry, I can't — "

The darkness weighs down on him, heavy and sudden, and he  _ cannot fucking see.  _

He's back in the cell again. 

Coarse stone is ripping against his bare back, hunger twisting his gut, and there's nowhere to go, nowhere but the invisible door, and that is  _ not possible. _ Specks and eddies swirl before his eyes. Is he sitting up, or lying down? Is he curled up in the corner? Jester can see him with her darkvision, she must know what's happening, but she has been silent for hours, she must be asleep, and he is not going to rob her of one single minute of rest, she has to  _ rest,  _ she  _ must  _ keep up her strength, it is the only thing that matters now, he can lie here sprawled in the darkness for days and weeks and months if he has to, so long as she gets  _ out —  _

Light floods into the cell.

_ "JESTER!"  _ Caleb screams, but the moment her name is ripped from his throat he realizes that it's all wrong. 

He's lying in bed. There's a blanket draped over him, and Jester — 

Jester has cast  _ light  _ on the candle on the bedside table. It gleams gently in the silence following Caleb's scream.

A soft groan escapes his lips as he throws an arm over his eyes.

"I'm sorry," Jester murmurs. "Did I make it worse?"

_ "Nein...nein…"  _ Gods, he can't stop shaking.

He feels Jester climbing back into bed, her form weighing down the mattress, and then she places one hand delicately on his arm, like she is afraid to touch him. Not that he can blame her, he thinks miserably.

"Put your arm down," she says gently. "Look at the room. You're here. It's not dark anymore."

This is not the first nightmare she has been here for, as it bleeds into the waking world, as he loses sight of everything and plunges stomach-droppingly down into the dark. It's not the first time she has pulled him back up out of it, back into the here and now, back to her. 

It will not be the last time either, Caleb thinks heavily, exhausted, not anywhere close to the last time. It will happen again, and again, and again.

Sometimes, in these moments, he wonders why he ever let her convince him to be with her.


	6. ohitd #9: kiss, kindness, kneel

_ kiss, kindness, kneel _

They are kneeling in the center of their bed, Jester pressing soft kisses to the side of Caleb's face as he struggles to untie the back of her dress by feel alone, when she murmurs into his ear, "So what exactly did you guys give the Cobalt Reserve, anyway?"

Caleb's fingers go still. "Pardon?"

"Don't  _ pardon  _ me, you know what I'm talking about." Jester pulls back a little, just enough to look him in the eye. Belying her serious expression is the barest hint of mischief playing around her eyes and the corners of her mouth. It is  _ concerning.  _ "They let you go right in there and copy one of their most powerful spells so you could transform me back into a tiefling again, I know they didn't just do that for free. Or because Beau's in their Order. Or to be  _ nice." _

"Jester…" She planned this, he realizes, she picked this moment  _ deliberately  _ — this moment of her body pressed against his and the memory of her breath still hot against his neck. It's futile, he's perfectly aware, but nevertheless he asks as casually as he can — which is not very casually — "We're really going to talk about this now?"

"We are, yes."

"Not in half an hour?"

"Oh, please, if I say yes you're just gonna try to distract me into forgetting. You're very sneaky like that, Caleb."

_ "I'm  _ — you are bringing up this subject while I have no blood left in my brain and  _ I  _ am the sneaky one?"

Jester ducks her face against his shoulder with a giggle. "Point stands."

_ Scheisse.  _ Caleb forces himself to stare at the ceiling. "If I answer your question, are we going to have a long discussion about it and then before you know it the sun will be going down and Nott will be coming to tell us it's time for dinner and I will not have had a chance to get this dress off you?"

"No!"

"Do you  _ promise?" _

Her hands come up around his face to tilt his head down so that he has to look at her again — she's grinning, and she smacks a kiss against his lips before declaring, "Of course I promise."

"Fine." Caleb takes a deep breath. "But only if you are sure."

_ "Caleb." _

Now he has to bite back a grin. She is almost more adorable teased than teasing. "I loaned them my spellbook. Happy?"

He moves to start gently pushing Jester back onto the bed, into the pillows, but she stops him with a hand to his chest. "No, hold on, what? You just gave it to them, just like that?"

"I said  _ loaned,  _ sweet one, not  _ gave." _

"For how long?"

"Not long!" Caleb rests his hands lightly on either side of Jester's neck and brushes the line of her jaw with his thumbs. "A day. Less than a day, maybe eight hours. Not long at all."

She is eyeing him warily. "That doesn't make any sense, Caleb."

"I am not lying to you,  _ liebling." _

"I didn't say you were lying. I said it didn't make any sense."

Impatience hooks a finger behind Caleb's breastbone, but he tries to keep his tone light. "This is starting to sound like a discussion."

"Well, yeah, Caleb," Jester exhales, "because I don't understand why the biggest library in the world would just  _ hand  _ you  _ true polymorph  _ for not even a whole day of looking at your spellbook, when they must already know every spell that was — "

Her eyes widen, and Caleb sees shock, followed swiftly by — disappointment? Disapproval?

_ Fuck. _

Jester sits back on her heels. "You gave them dunamancy," she breathes.

There's no point denying it. With a sigh, Caleb shuts his eyes and runs one hand through his hair briefly before moving to sit on the edge of the bed — this is definitely a discussion now, and they are definitely not doing anything else until it's over. (Or possibly ever again, if things go really poorly.) 

Jester hasn't moved. "Caleb."

"Ja, I let them look at my research and copy a few of the spells. There was not very much in there to begin with, it is not a big deal."

"How is that not a big deal?" She scrambles over to sit next to him. He can feel her gaze burning his skin, but in the interest of maintaining composure he refuses to return it. "You gave them — you  _ sold  _ them dunamancy!"

"And?"

"Do the others know?!"

Now he does look at her, askance and out of the corner of his eye. "It wasn't a secret, Jester, you could have asked any of them and they would have told you."

"I wanted to ask you." Her voice wavers ever so slightly. "You're my — you're — "

She audibly catches her breath, and Caleb takes her hand, lacing their fingers together, unable to help the touch of guilt that pierces through his irritation. "I am yours, and I'm happy to tell you what happened, but truly, Jester, there's nothing to worry about. It was an exchange of knowledge, that's all."

"You don't think it's dangerous?"

He thinks it's incredibly dangerous, but he shrugs his shoulders. "They would have learned about it eventually. The Empire has it already, it was only a matter of time before it spread across the ocean."

"But you didn't have to speed things up."

"Yes, I did." Caleb squeezes her hand tighter. "Your life was at stake."

"It wasn't my  _ life  _ at stake, it was just — " Before he can protest, Jester wrenches her hand free, glaring at him. "It wasn't my life, and even if it was, you didn't have the right to give away those spells!"

"What are you talking about?" he demands, turning sideways to face her properly now. "It's magic, it didn't belong to anybody, I didn't steal it. It's not about  _ rights.  _ It's a fundamental property of the universe, and someone in Tal'Dorei would have stumbled across it and figured it out on their own one day whether or not I or anyone else came over from Wildemount to hand it to them."

"Caleb — "

"Probably after a lot of trial and error,  _ dangerous  _ trial and error, but we have saved them that, maybe actually saved lives, by giving them spells that we already know work and a basic explanation of dunamis that does not depend on guesswork. If anything we have done  _ them  _ a kindness." 

He's only telling her the same things that he told himself, over and over, as he paced the narrow confines of the waiting room in the archive of the Cobalt Reserve weeks ago, with his spellbook clutched in a whiteknuckle grip. But Jester seems to buy it about as much as he did back then.

"You don't really believe that," she says sternly. "That's not what you believe about magic, and that's not what you believe about  _ kindness.  _ You don't really believe you did nothing wrong."

Caleb's face is hot. "No, you're right. I don't."

"So why wouldn't — "

He stands up. "Sorry for saving you," he mutters, and he walks out the door.


	7. ohitd #9: neck, nestle, need

_ neck, nestle, need _

Caleb skips dinner. He has been trying not to do this so often, he truly has, but tonight he doesn't need food — tonight he needs a long walk in the woods, alone, with no one but Frumpkin at his side, with no one to talk to him, with no one to  _ care. _

It doesn't help, of course. Walking alone through a forest of leafless trees, in the cold, with snow on the ground — this used to calm him, it used to be a way to sort through the whirlwind of thoughts and memories and find something heavy to hold onto — but it's been ruined for him now. Even with Frumpkin wrapping himself around his ankles every few steps, purring, or leaping up into his arms to keep him warm, the ice still settles into Caleb's heart minute after minute, until he's on the verge of screaming.

He stays out there anyway. He lets the panic squeeze tight around his chest like iron bands, like icicles. It is a distraction. It is what he needs.

_ You don't really believe you did nothing wrong.  _ Jester's words throb painfully in his skull.  _ Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. _

Caleb shoves his hands into his pockets and walks deeper into the forest.

*

By the time he comes back, later than he'd planned, it's after dark, and he is freezing cold despite the coat he has wrapped as tightly around him as he can. The inn's common room is filled with voices, pipe smoke, the clatter of tankards and dishes — Fjord and Yasha are sitting in one corner playing cards, and the rest of the Nein must be nearby as well. There's Nott up at the bar, standing on top of a bar stool, swaying, arguing with the woman behind the counter, waving her tiny goblin hands in the air, only a  _ little  _ bit drunk, she  _ promises. _

Everyone looks relaxed and nobody has come out here looking for him, so that must be a good sign.

Caleb slips through as quickly and quietly as he can, up the stairs to his and Jester's room. No one stops him along the way. Frumpkin, draped around his shoulders like a scarf, bounds down to the floor as soon as the door is open.

_ You don't really believe you did nothing wrong  _ echoes again somewhere in the distance of his mind, but he doesn't care anymore.

Jester is perched crosslegged on the bed, writing in her journal. When Caleb walks in, she scrambles off the bed to her feet. "Caleb, I'm — "

He crosses the room in three strides and kisses her. 

"Don't apologize," he whispers. He kisses her again, and again, thinking of mercury, of gum arabic, of smoke. "I'm sorry. I love you, I'm sorry.  _ Ich liebe dich. Es tut mir leid." _

"I love you too," Jester whispers back, and she folds her arms around Caleb's neck, holding him close. He leans into her, into her warmth and softness, wrapping his arms in turn around her waist, breathing in her scent, cinnamon and lavender and freshly-baked bread and some kind of oniony stew…

That's definitely not Jester. Caleb pulls out of their embrace slightly, just as his stomach betrays him with a loud growl.

Jester smiles. "I saved some supper for you," she says, nodding in the direction of the bedside table. "You should eat."

"Oh,  _ liebling…" _

"It's really good. It's got, like, sage and stuff."

She is looking up at him so earnestly, her tail flicking back and forth, and if there are any icicles still left frozen onto Caleb's heart, they melt into a vapor.

"I will eat." He touches his forehead to hers, his hands coming to rest beneath her elbows. "In a moment. I promise."

"You're cold," she whispers.

"I know."

"Where were you?"

Before he can pull back to look her in the eyes, before he can respond, Jester slants her mouth over his, and it's a few minutes before she  _ lets  _ him answer. By the time she finally does, they have moved a lot closer to the bed, and Caleb's coat has come off. It doesn't matter — he's not cold anymore.

_ "Nein,  _ listen — " Jester has released him, but she is tugging his shirttails out of his belt, and Caleb has to take hold of her wrists before she'll look back up at his face. "Listen. I have to say something."

"Caleb…"

"You need to know — " He frames her face with his hands, so lightly he's barely touching her. "I need you to know. I would have  _ given  _ them my spellbook. Given, not loaned."

She nestles her cheek into his palm, her eyes dark and shining, and Caleb feels heat rising beneath his skin. 

"I would have given them my life," he says. "I cannot say for certain that I wouldn't have given them another person's life, if they had asked for it, and I am not proud of that — but I  _ need  _ you to know that that is how much you matter to me."

"I wouldn't have let you do any of that," murmurs Jester. "Not for some stupid spell."

He strokes her face with his thumbs. "I would still have tried."

"It would still have been wrong."

"It would have been wrong. But I wouldn't have cared."

"Yes, you would," she whispers.

The tray of food Jester has saved for him must be getting cold by now, but it will still be there later after they have sunk into bed together, after this forgiveness is complete, and there are too many other things on Caleb's mind right now anyway, other kinds of hunger and weakness and need.

_ I am glad you see good in me,  _ Caleb thinks, and he doesn't correct her.


	8. ohitd #9: ignite, Infernal, ink

_ignite, Infernal, ink_

The first time she speaks Infernal to him in bed, he feels the pit of his stomach ignite with raw want. 

Moments later her teeth have sunk into his shoulder, but he shakes her off, reeling as if from a blow. _“Say more.”_

Jester giggles. “You don’t even know what I said.”

“Explain it, then.” Caleb rocks into her, the echo of her hell-speech pooling through him like spilled ink. “Explain it in Infernal.”

“Oh my god, did that, like, _do it_ for you? Is this a _thing_ now?”

_“Apparently.”_

Jester covers her smile with the back of her hand. “What’s the point of me talking dirty to you in a language you don’t even understand?”

_“I don’t know,_ Jester, ask my — ”

She cuts him off with a string of diabolical syllables that sear through him from head to toe and then vanish all too quickly. 

_“Scheisse,”_ he hisses into the crook of her neck, chest heaving. 

“Well I know what _that_ means,” Jester grins. “That’s not really fair, is it?”

She has a point. He needs to know, suddenly, exactly what she just told him — it sounded like a command, and that thought alone is enough to make him lift his head from her shoulder and manage, “Component pouch.”

“Huh?”

“My spell — _fuck —_ my spell component pouch, can you reach it?”

Jester’s voice is sly. “You could just get up and grab it yourself.”

“Not likely,” he growls into her neck. 

It takes a minute for Jester to reach her tail down to the floor and fish out the small leather bag from wherever it landed amongst their clothes earlier. As soon as she dangles it above their heads, hanging from the tip of her tail by its drawstring, Caleb seizes it and pulls out the twisted paper packet of soot and salt that he prepared that morning. 

_“Zungen,”_ he mutters, ripping it open and tossing it over his shoulder. 

He feels the magic settle like a fine dust into his ears and his mind, like powdered ink, like gunpowder waiting for a spark. 

Jester wriggles beneath him appreciatively. _“Comprehend languages?”_

_“Ja.”_

“So I could speak nothing but Infernal for the next, like, _hour,_ and you’ll understand everything I say.”

He huffs a breathless laugh against her skin. “Your confidence is touching, _liebling,_ but I am not going to last an hour.”

When she whispers her reply, he hears it clearly in Infernal, only this time he doesn’t have to guess what it means. _“I know a few spells too, Caleb.”_

The spark catches, and they burn. 


	9. ohitd #9: voice, violet, victim

_ voice, violet, victim _

"Was this like it was with Astrid?" Jester asks one night.

Caleb stirs, dragged out of half-sleep by Jester's voice, finding her bare shoulders with his arm and holding her a little closer without thinking. "Was what?"

"With Astrid," she mumbles into Caleb's chest. "Was it like this?"

"In what way?" he frowns. 

Jester sighs. She's only half-awake herself, and Caleb can feel her eyelashes fluttering against his skin. "I don't know."

"I don't know either, then." He presses a kiss to the top of her head and gives her shoulder a squeeze.

They lay there in silence, with the bedsheets twisted around them, too tired to straighten them out after a long day of travel and worry, and Caleb has begun drifting off once more before Jester speaks up again, quieter this time.

"Do you think about her when you're with me?"

Caleb opens his eyes. Jester isn't looking at him — she's staring at the wall, her cheek still resting over his heart, and hidden somewhere deep in her voice is a seed of fear. Compassion tightens like a cord around Caleb's throat. He sits up just a little, so that Jester has to shift, lifting her head to face him as he gazes down at her.

"Ah,  _ liebste."  _ It's just dark enough in the room that he can't be sure, when he strokes her bottom lip with his thumb, whether or not those are unshed tears sparkling in her violet eyes. He wonders how to answer her. With the truth, of course, but gently, because Jester is his healer, and she will not want him tearing open old wounds.

She kisses the tip of his thumb when he brushes it across her lips again, and he sighs.

"I do think of her, sometimes." Whether it's just the darkness and silence of the bedroom, or because opening this particular door in his heart is something he has not done in a long time, Caleb finds himself speaking in a near-whisper. "But not because...not in that way. I do not love her anymore. It's just you, Jester, I promise."

Jester takes his hand and kisses his palm now, and he has to catch his breath before going on.

"I think of her because I cannot quite..." This is harder than he expected. "That...that time in my life, it was…"

"You don't have to tell me," whispers Jester against his fingers, but he shakes his head.

"No, I want to." Caleb takes a deep breath. "We were just kids. It was hell, but we couldn't admit that; it would be admitting that we were victims, and that the man training us was not...worthy. So we told ourselves that we were fine, and then we did whatever we had to do to prove it to each other."

He doesn't need darkvision now to see that Jester is crying — just a few silent tears, but if he wants to be able to finish talking he's going to have to look away.

"It was love, in a sense, yes, but it was also…"

Jester finishes the sentence for him, softly, when he has trailed off into uncertainty. "You were just trying to survive."

The cord around Caleb's throat tightens even more. "Exactly." He swallows. "It was...it was survival, and it was comfort, even though it didn't really do either of those things. Not enough, anyway. But that's all I have ever…"

As he speaks, Jester kisses each knuckle on the back of his hand...and now the cord is choking him, and his own eyes are stinging. 

"This," he manages to force out, waving a hand at the room, at their bed, at Jester, "all of this — you and me, here — this is the first time in my life that this has not just been about  _ enduring.  _ That I have been sleeping with someone,  _ loving  _ someone, for a better reason than that."

So much for not tearing open old wounds. He's practically ripped open his chest. But Jester kisses the inside of his wrist, and then the smooth, scar-less skin of his arm, and then his shoulder; and then her lips are stitching shut the invisible gashes on his sternum and collarbone and above his heart, and the cord around his throat loosens, and he can breathe.

_ "Du bist so ein besserer grund,"  _ he murmurs, no longer sure if he's making sense, no longer caring. "If I ever think of Astrid when I am with you, that is why. I am thinking of how lucky I am."

He's going to say more — he's going to tell her exactly how lucky he feels, exactly what his reasons are, but then Jester's mouth is on his, stopping his words, so he has no choice but to show her instead.


End file.
